Written by danielcoughlin at The Lottery Mafia
At 6-6, the Orlando Magic are a mixed bag so far this season. New head coach Scott Skiles was expected to help this explosive roster reach the next level of skill and maturity. After a slow start, the Magic have strung together a consistent stretch of team play, even if their individual playing time has been anything but consistent.
At the beginning of the season there were a lot of possibilities for the Orlando Magic. The jump from young and learning to competing for a playoff spot in the improving, but still shallow Eastern Conference is a matter of margins at this point. The gap between teams like the Magic and Boston Celtics, on the outside looking in, and the Toronto Raptors or Atlanta Hawks seems to have been reduced to a fine line.
Truly, the early part of the NBA season is seeing an incredible amount of parity in the Eastern Conference. There may not be a team like the Golden State Warriors establishing themselves as a front-runner for one of the great teams to ever play the game, but at 6-6, Orlando is just two spots from the bottom of the East and also just one game behind the fifth-seeded Indiana Pacers.
With such a long way to go in the NBA season, the Magic still have 70 games to play, the pendulum of their season has swung with positive momentum over their past seven games, winning five of those matchups, including an overtime thriller on Wednesday night against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
But the pendulum could head the other direction at any time and a roster full of talented young players could find themselves not waving but drowning if things start to get messy.
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